Base 62 conversion

There is no standard module for this, but I have written my own functions to achieve that.

BASE62 = "0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"

def encode(num, alphabet):
    """Encode a positive number into Base X and return the string.

    Arguments:
    - `num`: The number to encode
    - `alphabet`: The alphabet to use for encoding
    """
    if num == 0:
        return alphabet[0]
    arr = []
    arr_append = arr.append  # Extract bound-method for faster access.
    _divmod = divmod  # Access to locals is faster.
    base = len(alphabet)
    while num:
        num, rem = _divmod(num, base)
        arr_append(alphabet[rem])
    arr.reverse()
    return ''.join(arr)

def decode(string, alphabet=BASE62):
    """Decode a Base X encoded string into the number

    Arguments:
    - `string`: The encoded string
    - `alphabet`: The alphabet to use for decoding
    """
    base = len(alphabet)
    strlen = len(string)
    num = 0

    idx = 0
    for char in string:
        power = (strlen - (idx + 1))
        num += alphabet.index(char) * (base ** power)
        idx += 1

    return num

Notice the fact that you can give it any alphabet to use for encoding and decoding. If you leave the alphabet argument out, you are going to get the 62 character alphabet defined on the first line of code, and hence encoding/decoding to/from 62 base.

Hope this helps.

PS - For URL shorteners, I have found that it's better to leave out a few confusing characters like 0Ol1oI etc. Thus I use this alphabet for my URL shortening needs - "23456789abcdefghijkmnpqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ"

Have fun.

If you're looking for the highest efficiency (like django), you'll want something like the following. This code is a combination of efficient methods from Baishampayan Ghose and WoLpH and John Machin.

# Edit this list of characters as desired.
BASE_ALPH = tuple("0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")
BASE_DICT = dict((c, v) for v, c in enumerate(BASE_ALPH))
BASE_LEN = len(BASE_ALPH)

def base_decode(string):
    num = 0
    for char in string:
        num = num * BASE_LEN + BASE_DICT[char]
    return num

def base_encode(num):
    if not num:
        return BASE_ALPH[0]

    encoding = ""
    while num:
        num, rem = divmod(num, BASE_LEN)
        encoding = BASE_ALPH[rem] + encoding
    return encoding

You may want to also calculate your dictionary in advance. (Note: Encoding with a string shows more efficiency than with a list, even with very long numbers.)

>>> timeit.timeit("for i in xrange(1000000): base.base_decode(base.base_encode(i))", setup="import base", number=1)
2.3302059173583984

Encoded and decoded 1 million numbers in under 2.5 seconds. (2.2Ghz i7-2670QM)

The following decoder-maker works with any reasonable base, has a much tidier loop, and gives an explicit error message when it meets an invalid character.

def base_n_decoder(alphabet):
    """Return a decoder for a base-n encoded string
    Argument:
    - `alphabet`: The alphabet used for encoding
    """
    base = len(alphabet)
    char_value = dict(((c, v) for v, c in enumerate(alphabet)))
    def f(string):
        num = 0
        try:
            for char in string:
                num = num * base + char_value[char]
        except KeyError:
            raise ValueError('Unexpected character %r' % char)
        return num
    return f

if __name__ == "__main__":
    func = base_n_decoder('0123456789abcdef')
    for test in ('0', 'f', '2020', 'ffff', 'abqdef'):
        print test
        print func(test)

I once wrote a script to do this aswell, I think it's quite elegant :)

import string
# Remove the `_@` below for base62, now it has 64 characters
BASE_LIST = string.digits + string.letters + '_@'
BASE_DICT = dict((c, i) for i, c in enumerate(BASE_LIST))

def base_decode(string, reverse_base=BASE_DICT):
    length = len(reverse_base)
    ret = 0
    for i, c in enumerate(string[::-1]):
        ret += (length ** i) * reverse_base[c]

    return ret

def base_encode(integer, base=BASE_LIST):
    if integer == 0:
        return base[0]

    length = len(base)
    ret = ''
    while integer != 0:
        ret = base[integer % length] + ret
        integer /= length

    return ret

Example usage:

for i in range(100):                                    
    print i, base_decode(base_encode(i)), base_encode(i)